We're On The Brink Of A Fourth Era In Architecture

London's Helicon Building
is an example of what Curtis B. Wayne calls "The Fourth
Architecture."Courtesy of Paul
Grundy

When New York City architect Curtis B. Wayne first started
talking about “The Fourth Architecture,” it was clear he was not
doing so to make friends. You do not write manifestos to make
friends. You write them because of some perceived urgency,
because the time is right.

As a long-standing practitioner, radio host, and graduate of Cooper Union and
Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, he already has a lot of
friends. What he’s interested in is saving architecture from the
current orthodoxy of form-making over substance, or “sculpture
you can live in.” “We are too wise for this,” writes Wayne.

In Wayne’s conception, the First Architecture is the Hellenistic,
the Second is the Gothic, and the Third is the modern – up to and
including our contemporary, formal experimentation with software.

To get to the Fourth Architecture, as Wayne himself will tell
you, architecture needs less self-congratulatory back slapping
and more holding of feet to the fire, more self-criticism within
our ranks.

In the book, he quotes his former professor and mentor, John Q.
Hejduk: “The fundamental issue of architecture is that does it
affect the spirit, or doesn’t it? If it doesn’t affect the
spirit, it’s a building. If it affects the spirit, it’s
architecture.”

Wayne argues that the present state of digital form-making is
akin to mere decoration and that architecture needs to return to
“shapes that work” – shapes that constitute responses to real
environmental, economic, and social forces. Otherwise, as Hejduk
would assert, it’s just building.

“Are architects the natural and logical integrators of the
artistic with the technical? It can be argued that owing to our
training we—above all other professions—“should” be the master
builders, the master integrators. But instead we see the
profession fractured by the self-identifying trends of so-called
sustainability; the intrusion of pure form, driven by the
complexities of shape-making made possible by computational
generation; and the relegation of discussions of urbanism and
social function to the “soft” professions of the social sciences.
And yet, we architects can and should include all these aspects
in our practice; we must, else we are merely makers of
decoration.”

The New Academic Building
for Cooper Union, located in New York, is considered a failure of
Fourth Architecture.Flickr/robzand

What then counts as Fourth Architecture? To begin with, it helps
to look at what it is NOT. For example, the Morphosis-designed
New Academic Building for Cooper Union. Wayne calls it “an
exemplary failure” because its signature enveloping screen
system, designed to be computer-operable, does not work, and has
thus been reduced to mere manually-operated decoration, a static
façade.

For Wayne, true architecture is missing when form-making takes
precedence over function and performance. The Morphosis case is
an interesting one because it is an example of good intentions
that ultimately failed. The building desperately wanted to be
part of the Fourth Architecture, but fell short.

“The integration of functional form with the beautiful is as
elusive as a conclusive definition of beauty itself,” says Wayne.
This may be why there are so few examples of successful Fourth
Architecture candidates. But looking back in time, he finds a few
to illustrate his point: George Fred Keck’s Crystal House, RMJM’s
Glaxo-Wellcome building, and the Helicon Building by Sheppard
Robson Architects.

George Fred Keck's Crystal
House is seen in 1930s Chicago.Courtesy of Robert Medina, Chicago History
Museum

Elements of Fourth
Architecture are seen in RMJM’s Glaxo-Wellcome building in
London.Courtesy of
RMJM

Wayne also looks at something called the HeliOptix Integrated
Concentrating Solar Façade, developed by the Center for
Architecture Science and Ecology and currently part of a proposed
design by SHoP Architects for New York’s Fashion Institute of
Technology. Wayne defines this as a wall determined by its
intended function, a wall that works, as he would stress. The
wall is comprised of pyramidal water-cooled modules that rotate
and track the sun. Lenses concentrate sunlight onto photovoltaic
cells.

The Fourth Architecture, then, that which expresses functional
responses to the environment and human needs, doesn’t position
style as a driving element – it is “style-less.” Though it could
be argued this constitutes a style in its own right, it is style
not for style’s sake, but as the result of integrated priorities.

Mr. Wayne’s little red book neatly crystallizes some of the major
design issues confronting practice today. With the ability to
make almost any shape or form through scripting, computation,
parametrics, or simply push-me-pull-me and other plug-ins, he is
arguing for a reason, for “shapes that work,” a return to
architectural forms that have a purpose.

If this were the case, would we lose anything? What would we
stand to gain in this post-parametric world? Or perhaps this is
the highest potential for parametricism – and the form-making we
have been seeing over the last few years is merely the first
phase toward something new, toward The Fourth Architecture. Let’s
hope so.

Guy Horton is a writer based in Los Angeles. In addition
to authoring “The
Indicator”, he is a frequent contributor to The
Architect’s Newspaper, Metropolis Magazine, The Atlantic Cities,
and The Huffington Post. He has also written
for Architectural Record, GOOD Magazine, and Architect
Magazine. You can hear Guy on the radio and podcast as guest host
for the show DnA: Design & Architecture on 89.9 FM
KCRW out of Los Angeles. Follow Guy on Twitter @GuyHorton.